Clocking Off with Clouds
Why "Follow Your Passion" Is Bad Advice (and what to do instead) (Ep 10)
23 Mar 2026
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to Clocking Off of Clouds, your cozy corner of the internet where we talk careers, personal growth, and real life. Hey there and welcome back to another episode of Clocking Off of Clouds. I hope you guys are having a fantastic day or are about to have a great day.
And I'm not sure if you guys are watching this on YouTube, but if you guys are seeing the visuals, then you might be able to notice that it's much brighter today in the studio than it usually is. And it's because the sun is finally starting to set much, much later. It is actually around 4pm right now and the sun is still bright up in the sky, which was not the case for the past couple of months.
So yeah, we might be getting used to a brighter studio setup and not have to rely on these artificial lights as much as we have had in the previous episodes.
Chapter 2: Why is 'follow your passion' considered bad career advice?
This week, we're going to talk about why following your passion is actually terrible career advice. and why pursuing your passion as a career is actually incredibly overrated. So if you're feeling a little bit lost in your career or not sure what to do, then this is the perfect episode for you.
If you enjoy these kinds of cozy chats about careers and money and what we're all doing with our lives, then Clocking Off of Clouds is a podcast for you. As a reminder, I upload episodes every Monday on Spotify at 5pm GMT. Don't forget to follow the podcast and turn on your notifications so you don't miss any episodes.
Okay, so how many of you have been in a situation where you don't know what to do with your lives? You're trying to figure out what career to pursue or what jobs to apply for. You're in uni and there are so many options. You're so lost. You're not sure what the right choice is. And you're asking around and people give you the same advice again and again, which is just follow your passion.
Just pursue your passion. Just do what you love. And you're thinking to yourself, well, that's the problem. I don't know what my passion is. I mean, I've been there. I'm sure a lot of you guys who are listening to this right now can relate. I don't know about you, but that advice has helped me a total of zero times. It has never, ever, ever been helpful.
You tell me just follow my passion makes me actually feel worse about myself now because I don't have a passion.
also just generally in my opinion it's not great advice it's just like saying just be happy follow your passion in my opinion is over simplistic and unrealistic because in real life a very very small minority of people actually feel that calling actually feel like there's this one thing that they are supposed to do with their lives i'm not saying it doesn't exist i'm not saying that
People who do that are silly. Actually, the people who I do know in my life who have that calling and who have a clear, clear passion for something and are pursuing it are incredibly impressive. And those people, I admire them so much. But in reality, that's a very, very small percentage. Most of us don't go around thinking that is the one thing I want to do for the rest of my life.
Because it's rare. Unless you were a musical genius since you were very young and you know that your life goal is to play piano or violin or guitar for the rest of your life, or you are an elite athlete and you're trying to get into the Olympics,
those situations are very rare right like in reality how many of us know those kinds of people most of us live life and not to say that most of us are average because that is not at all what i'm trying to say but most of us live life without this very specific individual calling and that is normal that is completely normal so the advice the blanket statement of follow your passion is actually utterly useless to most of us to 90 of us so when we don't have this one specific calling or one specific passion
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Chapter 3: What are the three myths about passion in careers?
I'm curious about like strategy, growth, startups. I'm also curious about other things like dance and food and travel. But none of those things are things that I would label as passions, but they're all things I'm curious about. And
suddenly multiple doors have now opened another thing that i would say is really really useful and it's something that i have adopted in my life is again instead of asking yourself what am i passionate about because again this word holds so much weight ask yourself what is something that i do and i easily go into flow state i feel like we've all felt this flow state right there's loads of hilarious tiktoks online of people in flow state and they're just like eating their sushi and dipping it or like
having food or these other hilarious things like doing your makeup that those are all fantastic examples of flow state but think of another more productive or work-like environment where you have felt like that flow state what are some things that activities that you've done that make time pass by really quickly again doesn't have to be a passion per se but the fact that you're in that flow state or you catch yourself in that flow state means that time passes by quickly when you're doing it
and therefore you are just in utter concentration and utter, like you're in the moment. And that is something again, that is an indication that that might be something that is worth pursuing. The reason why I also prefer the word curiosity over passion is because curiosity implies that you only have to find something slightly interesting for it to be worth exploring.
And that means that there are multiple things in your life that are worth exploring versus passion almost sounds like there's this one thing. And that's the thing that you have to spend your entire life dedicating yourself to and I really fully do not believe that. Much like soulmates, I personally don't think that there's just one specific person that is for you.
Love for me is more than finding that specific person. It's more about making a choice. And I very much believe that that same theory applies to careers. I think that there are multiple different options and multiple different openings and doors that you could take. with your career.
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Chapter 4: What questions should you ask yourself to find the right career?
There are multiple different paths. When I was applying to jobs in uni, I wanted to do consulting, and now I'm in tech. Doesn't mean that, oh, consulting wasn't the calling that I thought it was.
Chapter 5: How can you identify your 'sh*t sandwich' in career choices?
It's just careers are flexible. Life is long. You're supposed to pivot along the way, and maybe that's not something I would say for long-term partners, but it's something I would say here for careers. And it's much more common nowadays to have a career that looks more like a portfolio of different things that you've achieved instead of an incline upwards through the career ladder, right?
i feel like that's becoming outdated and therefore the idea of this one career passion is also outdated people do multiple things with their lives there's not this one thing that you're supposed to be pursuing and i think that releases the pressure a little bit for all of us one day you want to be a chef and then the next day you might want to be a dancer like who knows and i think that's okay that's the joy of life it's flexible
you can pivot and you can live multiple lives within your lifetime i'm currently reading another book called designing your life which is written by these two stanford professors who are encouraging people to think of their careers with design thinking frameworks there is one concept in the book which is called wayfinding instead of looking at your life and your career
like a GPS map or you're in the car with the destination already in mind, already before you even start the journey, you already know what the destination is and you drive towards it. Instead of it being like that, it should actually be the opposite where you have a compass and you don't exactly know where you're going, but you're just following the compass along the way.
Instead of knowing what the final destination is and following the GPS tracker until you get to that final destination, You follow little directions. You can see in the compass where it's taking you. And that's the little interest that's pushing you towards, you know, little signposts instead of the final destination. But you just go from signpost to signpost.
And sometimes when you're at a signpost, you don't know what the next one looks like, but you're taking it, taking the compass with you and finding out along the way. One quote that is really resonating with me this year, and it's something that I am fully embracing in 2026 is is motion creates clarity. Answers reveal themselves to you in movement, not in stillness.
When you are stuck in a place and when you don't know what to do, the worst thing to help you make that decision is to just sit there and ponder and overthink it. Specifically in this video, we're talking about careers, but this applies to everything, whether it's in love, family, relationships, careers, whatever it is, the answers will reveal themselves to you in movements. So remember that.
Motion creates clarity. I always tell myself that it's actually on my little phone wallpaper. I also think there are a lot of myths attached to this finding your passion concept. And myth number one is that your passion comes first. Just like confidence. I don't think that you become confident and then you do something. When I started doing content, I wasn't confident beforehand.
And then I decided I'm going to start filming myself and putting on the Internet for thousands of people to see. I actually built my confidence after my videos started doing very well. And that's how I've built my confidence in my life in general. I've proven to myself I can do things and then I build the confidence. I actually think passion is very similar.
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